The Mafia Discussion Thread

[Pesci]

Why? What's wrong with sign-up threads going up quickly?

If we all agree to the limit in number of games (and we have, that isn't up for debate) then we have to have a system for when games get run. If I've created a game and happen to be online the very second a game gets finished I can quickly open my sign-ups. That isn't very fair on people who've been waiting to start their game - being online at the moment a game finishes is not a good qualification for getting to start a game. It's not that opening sign-ups quickly isn't good, it's that the free-for-all isn't good for players because it means games get started purely on the basis of whoever's online when the last one finishes.

Sign-ups don't have to go up the moment a game is finished. They can go up when RW gets word that a game running at the moment is nearing completion, for instance. They can go up when RW tells us they can go up. Or maybe they should go up the moment a game is finished, since it's unlikely games are going to finish at the same time all the time and so somebody who misses out once because they're in bed won't miss out every time. And though people who get to the front of a waiting list should be more prepared to run their games and thus it won't be a case of madly rushing to get roles typed up once their sign-up thread is posted, I haven't seen any indication that games are better planned/run now than they were before. People are always going to leave things until the last minute, waiting list or not. A race to see who can get their thread up fastest might lead to somebody who hasn't even thought about their game prospering, but that happens with the waiting list anyway. I don't see how getting rid of the waiting list would be any worse for the players in practice.

The waiting list has two advantages on that front - RW can promote people who finish their games (or run good ones);

So people who sign up can essentially be messed around in favour of those with good reputations? There's no evidence to say that somebody like Sousa would run a better game than somebody like me. If people get to skip the queue, I don't see much point in a queue at all.

It's nothing to do with reputations, it's to do with who runs games to completion. I haven't seen any evidence of RW doing anything unfair with the power to bump games, so it's not a problem.

Yeah, and by reputation I mean somebody who has the reputation of being able to run games to completion. I didn't mean the biggest kid on the playground. And of course he hasn't yet, but we haven't had a massive call for reform like this yet.

And how many times have we seen Mafias making their way to the top of the queue and failing to get the sign-up thread up in a reasonable amount of time? I don't see any proof that the waiting list encourages people to plan their Mafias better, or that somebody who is 5th on the list when somebody else signs up in 25th place will be in a better position to run a game by the time it's their turn.

Waiting a day or two for sign-ups isn't a crippling blow; and most of the people who've delayed starting their sign-ups have stopped running their game altogether - saving the Game Cube from mafias that might've been unenthusiastically run.

Yeah, in theory. Still kind of ruins the list though.

I don't see why people who think of an awesome Mafia idea and plan it all out intricately and get super exited but only really have the time to run it in the summer (let's say when they're on a break from school) should be condemned to either running their game in autumn when they can't dedicate the right amount of time to it or not running it at all, or waiting a whole year to run it the next summer when they probably couldn't care less.

That's a completely different point from the waiting list. If you think people should be able to book an approximate slot in advance, then I'm all in favour of that. Sousa did it and RW agreed - if you want to run a game a decent amount in advance, then that's fine - you're not really jumping the queue.

Ugh, it's not a completely different point at all. The waiting list dictates that you run your game when your number comes up. If you're in a position where you can't run your game when it's your turn, how is that not related to the waiting list? To be fair I didn't know about the Sousa thing, but I was talking about people thinking of their ideas in the spur of the moment anyway so it doesn't really make a difference. As I said before, I'm not a fan of the waiting list favouring those who thought of their ideas 4 months earlier and aren't as prepared as somebody who thought of their idea yesterday and has it all mapped out.

Meanwhile some slacker could be 1st on the list and hasn't even thought things through at all, so it goes to 2nd place, only they haven't been seen on EWB for weeks, so 3rd place gets a go and all the while 1st and 2nd stay at the top until they finally get their shit together while our aforementioned guy in 25th could be in a better position and doesn't get to run their game because they didn't think of the idea four months earlier. As I said before, being above somebody else on the waiting list doesn't mean you'll be any more ready than they are when the next spot opens up and that's why the list fails. We don't all work at the same rate and with the same enthusiasm

No, and opening a sign-up in a game of pot-luck doesn't make you a more enthusiastic game moderator either. I agree that if someone misses their start date they should be bumped at least a few spots down the list as a penalty for fucking the rest of us around. That's a much smaller point that's up for discussion, but you seem to be debating the merits of no waiting list OR game limit vs. waiting list + limit, instead of just debating the merits of the waiting list itself. The limit has been agreed to fairly and the waiting list is the best way of administering that. It's not a set in stone, some draconian measure - RW can promote people with a good track record of completing games and you CAN reserve a specific for your game if it's a bit in advance.

I'm debating the practicality of the waiting list actually. I've established before that I want the limit to stay and I haven't been saying otherwise in any of this. I see RW promoting people with a good track record of completing games in favour of others as a shocking idea. How will people learn from their mistakes if they're constantly being pushed back in the queue? If Person A thinks of a game before Person B (and this is assuming they're like the majority of us and have no specific problem with when they run their games) he gets to go first because that's the way the list works, but then Person C joins up a few weeks later and gets skipped ahead of both of them because he's "better"? I'm not sure giving people like Sousa and MPH more practice is the way to help those who don't have the best track records. Oh, and we can reserve specific times now? News to me. I would've thought Sousa was just a rare exception but let's make the waiting list useless.

I'd be all in favour of a poll every month so that we can vote for one game to jump to the top of the list. People who're waiting have to manually submit their games each month if they're ready to run and then we vote for one to jump the queue. That keeps people wanting to run a game around promoting their game, rather than signing up when they get an idea and forgetting about it.

The problem with this idea is that it will almost always end up being somebody like Sousa, MPH, RW etc. I just don't see how we can have a waiting list to give everybody a set chance to run their game and then pull tricks like these out of the bag. In a very basic sense it seems you're arguing in the best interests of the game-players and I'm arguing in the best interests of the game mods. There's probably a middle ground somewhere.

The list is getting smaller and smaller. When accounting for the recent people that dropped out, it's at something like 23. Realistically, at least 5 of those probably won't ever run (and that's going to be true whenever the list's at about 25.) That means that, if we can get games down to running for an average of one month each, you'll have around 3 months to wait to run your game at absolute most. That's the biggest problem for why the Cube's getting quieter and why the list's taking too long to get worked through - games are running slowly. Be this because of their larger and larger numbers, slack moderating or a downturn in enthusiasm - it's the principle reason for why things are dragging, not the list.

Agreed. A quieter Game Cube doesn't iron out most of my grievances though.

Running a game isn't a god-given right. They aren't Dome diaries because they require the involvement of dozens of other people. You wouldn't run BR and JP at the same time, it would be ludicrous. The Cube can only handle so many games and people will sign up for whatever's going. The game limit is the fairest way of making sure that there are always good, active games to play and enough interested players to make them work. It just doesn't work to say 'people will sign up for whatever they can handle' because we can't predict how much play we'll have in a given game. We might be night-killed on the first night. We might realise that we have nothing to contribute at one moment in the game because the conversation's become all about the source material. We might simply lose interest because it's not the kind of game we enjoy. A sign-up is not a guarantee of any kind of activity, and that's why people will sign-up for more than they will necessarily be able to contribute to.

Again, haven't been disputing the game limit at all.

As for a committee, I think it would need to more balanced than what Ruki is suggesting. You can't just take a bunch of the best game-runners around because it doesn't give a fair representation of the Game Cube. My version would look something like RW (he's mod after all), LD (or anybody else who plays a shitload of games but never seems that interested in running games, i.e. me ) oldskool/-A- (generalising a bit here but they're seen more as game players than game runners), MPH/Sousa/TEOL, and I dunno, the fifth person can be just about anybody. Maybe Ruki.

[Sousa]

To be fair, people, I have a line cut "in the bank," but it predates the list in its current form (and thus might not work anyway) and I doubt I'm seriously going to use it anyway if someone opens a new game soon.

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

I'm not so sure that a poll would tilt things in the favour of myself/Sousa/TEOL and never give anyone else a chance.

Let's say the average game takes about a month to complete (it's usually less), and we run five games at a time. That's five games a month.

It's highly unlikely that I'd run a game more than every other month, which means I'd take one out of ten. RW and probably TEOL are in the same boat, Sousa might go for two.

That still leaves 50% of the games belonging to someone else.

Edited November 22, 2008 by Mr. Potato Head

[Matt]

I'm not so sure that a poll would tilt things in the favour of myself/Sousa/TEOL and never give anyone else a chance.

Let's say the average game takes about a month to complete (it's usually less), and we run five games at a time. That's five games a month.

It's highly unlikely that I'd run a game more than every other month, which means I'd take one out of ten. RW and probably TEOL are in the same boat, Sousa might go for two.

That still leaves 50% of the games belonging to someone else.

But it still means that people don't have a fair chance because you/Sousa/TEOL/Zan/GoGo/etc: would get to play almost immediately, whereas people like D-Day would still have to wait until there was a poll without the "elite" in.

Perhaps the solution is to have different categories. 1 mafias for people who've run 0 successful games. 2 for people who've run 1-3 games. 2 for people who've run 4+ games. And then 1 for "major" mafias, for want of a better term - by this I mean Traditional mafia, Webcom mafia, Jobber mafia, etc:

[Sousa]

By "major" you mean "numbered series mafias?" Because I'm kind of running out of jobbers.

[Matt]

By "major" you mean "numbered series mafias?" Because I'm kind of running out of jobbers.

Sort of. But then again I wouldn't class CHIKARA Mafia 2 as "major". The only ones I would consider major are Webcom, TradMaf, EWB Mafia, Jobber and maybe if RW was to do another WWE/F mafia.

[FireDoughnut]

what did I do?

[Matt]

what did I do?

({)

[FireDoughnut]

(})

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

I'm not so sure that a poll would tilt things in the favour of myself/Sousa/TEOL and never give anyone else a chance.

Let's say the average game takes about a month to complete (it's usually less), and we run five games at a time. That's five games a month.

It's highly unlikely that I'd run a game more than every other month, which means I'd take one out of ten. RW and probably TEOL are in the same boat, Sousa might go for two.

That still leaves 50% of the games belonging to someone else.

But it still means that people don't have a fair chance because you/Sousa/TEOL/Zan/GoGo/etc: would get to play almost immediately, whereas people like D-Day would still have to wait until there was a poll without the "elite" in.

Perhaps the solution is to have different categories. 1 mafias for people who've run 0 successful games. 2 for people who've run 1-3 games. 2 for people who've run 4+ games. And then 1 for "major" mafias, for want of a better term - by this I mean Traditional mafia, Webcom mafia, Jobber mafia, etc:

Which based on the stats I outlined above, would be one out of every two polls on average - and we'd be averaging slightly over one poll a week. So we'd be getting a non-"elite" game starting every 12 days or so (probably more often, as I purposely made my initial argument seem more skewed towards the "elite" than the real numbers.) That's not so bad.

[Matt]

I'm not so sure that a poll would tilt things in the favour of myself/Sousa/TEOL and never give anyone else a chance.

Let's say the average game takes about a month to complete (it's usually less), and we run five games at a time. That's five games a month.

It's highly unlikely that I'd run a game more than every other month, which means I'd take one out of ten. RW and probably TEOL are in the same boat, Sousa might go for two.

That still leaves 50% of the games belonging to someone else.

But it still means that people don't have a fair chance because you/Sousa/TEOL/Zan/GoGo/etc: would get to play almost immediately, whereas people like D-Day would still have to wait until there was a poll without the "elite" in.

Perhaps the solution is to have different categories. 1 mafias for people who've run 0 successful games. 2 for people who've run 1-3 games. 2 for people who've run 4+ games. And then 1 for "major" mafias, for want of a better term - by this I mean Traditional mafia, Webcom mafia, Jobber mafia, etc:

Which based on the stats I outlined above, would be one out of every two polls on average - and we'd be averaging slightly over one poll a week. So we'd be getting a non-"elite" game starting every 12 days or so (probably more often, as I purposely made my initial argument seem more skewed towards the "elite" than the real numbers.) That's not so bad.

Yeah but you listed 3 people, if you take a look at the completed game list there's Sousa, TEOL, Zan, yourself, Ruki, C-MIL and Josh who'd come in the 4+ category with Norro to join when he finishes MythMaf. So if you say that you all do a game every 6-8 weeks (on average), you're talking about you guys having a high percentage of the games on offer.

Just seems fairer to have slots for the varying reputations - it also ensures that we don't have lots of "new" game mods who don't finish their games at the same time.

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

How many people are going to vote for a Ruki game over anybody else in that list, though?

(Sorry Ruki. Still you.)

[Sousa]

I like Ruki's games.

[Matt]

How many people are going to vote for a Ruki game over anybody else in that list, though?

(Sorry Ruki. Still you.)

If it becomes apparent that someone isn't going to get their game voted in (pretty unlikely since there's probably not going to be more than a couple every time) after 3-4 polls, then drop them into the category below and see if it gets voted in there. If not, then it's probably not worth running because no-one will have an interest in it.

[Ruki]

You never loved me MPH

Sousa you are great.

And I think people should have to re-register their ideas, to make sure that they are still interested in running the games, still around the cube, and to make sure it wasn't a spur of the moment. Even if people just say "Yup, still running," that is good enough. This way, I think we'll get rid of about 10 games or so.....I think anyways.

[-A-]

Yeah but you listed 3 people, if you take a look at the completed game list there's Sousa, TEOL, Zan, yourself, Ruki, C-MIL and Josh who'd come in the 4+ category with Norro to join when he finishes MythMaf. So if you say that you all do a game every 6-8 weeks (on average), you're talking about you guys having a high percentage of the games on offer.

Just seems fairer to have slots for the varying reputations - it also ensures that we don't have lots of "new" game mods who don't finish their games at the same time.

It wouldn't be quite that big a problem. The poll would only be determining one slot out of the five - so 4 people would still be running their game as a result of the list. This just adds another 'check' to the list (the others being RW and the big/medium/little split.)

I don't even necessarily think that the Sousas of the world would always be winning the vote. People are just as likely to vote for an interesting theme as they are for a good moderator. Saved By The Bell or Futurama or something would have a good shot of winning compared to the next JobberMafia or another Tick game.

[Sousa]

1. Jobber Mafia was a trilogy, so unless I go all George Lucas crazygonuts there's not going to be another one.

2. The only reason I'd consider doing another Tick game is because Teej and Josh said there should be a sequel.

3. You're dead to me.

[-A-]

Sign-ups don't have to go up the moment a game is finished. They can go up when RW gets word that a game running at the moment is nearing completion, for instance. They can go up when RW tells us they can go up. Or maybe they should go up the moment a game is finished, since it's unlikely games are going to finish at the same time all the time and so somebody who misses out once because they're in bed won't miss out every time. And though people who get to the front of a waiting list should be more prepared to run their games and thus it won't be a case of madly rushing to get roles typed up once their sign-up thread is posted, I haven't seen any indication that games are better planned/run now than they were before. People are always going to leave things until the last minute, waiting list or not. A race to see who can get their thread up fastest might lead to somebody who hasn't even thought about their game prospering, but that happens with the waiting list anyway. I don't see how getting rid of the waiting list would be any worse for the players in practice.

That's all fair enough. I agree that the list isn't really going to increase the turnaround of games and it's not necessarily going to make games more prepared - but they were never the reasons for the list and we're no worse off than without it. The reason I replied like I did was because I thought your point was 'the list increases the time between games finishing and starting, slowing the whole process down.' On the issue of timing - list or no list, things would be relatively even so it's not really a big deal.

Waiting a day or two for sign-ups isn't a crippling blow; and most of the people who've delayed starting their sign-ups have stopped running their game altogether - saving the Game Cube from mafias that might've been unenthusiastically run.

Yeah, in theory. Still kind of ruins the list though.

The list doesn't matter, making mafia games better for all of us does. The list isn't there as a separate entity that has to be respected - if we see a rule change that improves things, we do it - it doesn't matter whether it changes the idea we had before.

That's a completely different point from the waiting list. If you think people should be able to book an approximate slot in advance, then I'm all in favour of that. Sousa did it and RW agreed - if you want to run a game a decent amount in advance, then that's fine - you're not really jumping the queue.

Ugh, it's not a completely different point at all. The waiting list dictates that you run your game when your number comes up. If you're in a position where you can't run your game when it's your turn, how is that not related to the waiting list? To be fair I didn't know about the Sousa thing, but I was talking about people thinking of their ideas in the spur of the moment anyway so it doesn't really make a difference. As I said before, I'm not a fan of the waiting list favouring those who thought of their ideas 4 months earlier and aren't as prepared as somebody who thought of their idea yesterday and has it all mapped out.

It's a more specific problem that can be changed independently of the list, so it's a different point. I agree that people should be able to ask for a specific time to run their game as long as it isn't flagrantly jumping the queue. If the only time you can run your game is a month before you'll make it to the top of the list, tough shit - you can't jump ahead. If we get a popularity poll up then you can appeal to the rest of the players. If they don't vote for it when you're also not near the top of the list, then you shouldn't be running game and that's fair (I think.)

I'm debating the practicality of the waiting list actually. I've established before that I want the limit to stay and I haven't been saying otherwise in any of this. I see RW promoting people with a good track record of completing games in favour of others as a shocking idea. How will people learn from their mistakes if they're constantly being pushed back in the queue? If Person A thinks of a game before Person B (and this is assuming they're like the majority of us and have no specific problem with when they run their games) he gets to go first because that's the way the list works, but then Person C joins up a few weeks later and gets skipped ahead of both of them because he's "better"? I'm not sure giving people like Sousa and MPH more practice is the way to help those who don't have the best track records.

But that's not how it's working. If that were happening, it would be bad, but it isn't - so why debate it? RW can answer this himself, but re-arrangements of the list have been few and far between. The idea that someone would be getting pushed to the bottom of the list is horrible, but it won't happen. There are multiple games at the top of the list by people who've never run games before and games by people who've run loads down at the bottom.

Oh, and we can reserve specific times now? News to me. I would've thought Sousa was just a rare exception but let's make the waiting list useless.

It's not useless, it's better. The waiting list has a purpose; and the ability to reserve and approximate time has a purpose, they aren't exclusive. Even if we come to an agreement that bastardises the waiting list idea beyond belief, that doesn't really matter - let's decide what's best rather than anything else.

As for a committee, I think it would need to more balanced than what Ruki is suggesting. You can't just take a bunch of the best game-runners around because it doesn't give a fair representation of the Game Cube. My version would look something like RW (he's mod after all), LD (or anybody else who plays a shitload of games but never seems that interested in running games, i.e. me ) oldskool/-A- (generalising a bit here but they're seen more as game players than game runners), MPH/Sousa/TEOL, and I dunno, the fifth person can be just about anybody. Maybe Ruki.

I think this is dangerous territory and I'm not quite sure what the benefits would be. If we have RW as a sensible mod with lots of power (that he tries not to use) and the popularity poll with limited power, but representative of the games players as a whole, that should be enough. What would the advantages be of a committee over RW and a popularity vote? There'd be even more murky territory of favouritism and abuse of power.

Edited November 22, 2008 by -A-

[-A-]

1. Jobber Mafia was a trilogy, so unless I go all George Lucas crazygonuts there's not going to be another one.

2. The only reason I'd consider doing another Tick game is because Teej and Josh said there should be a sequel.

3. You're dead to me.

It was probably a bad example. My point was - a new, interesting theme will be just as likely to get votes as a game run by someone well-respected.

[Matt]

Another idea - a sort of hybrid, if you will.

Keep the list, but every game on the list MUST be ready to run. The reason they must be ready to run is because every other time there's a slot available, a poll is put up for 24/48 hours and EWB decides which game should be run. In other words we go to the top of the list the first time, we put the list to a poll the second time, we go to the top of the list the third time, we put the list to a poll the fourth time, etc:.

This means people aren't waiting forever if it's a game that is popular and we won't have any games that won't be ready to run straight away.

I still stand behind the idea that games like TradMaf, WebCom, EWBMaf, etc: should get auto-queue jumps though because they're almost certain to get voted in anyway.